Wednesday, November 08, 2006

My First Flat Tire

I changed my first flat tire on a in probably ten years today. Yesterday when I was returning home with my little Toyota there was a Cherokee that had knocked down the fence along the entrance alley to the back lane and plowed into the side of the house. The fence was laying across the lane with nails sticking up, and I'm pretty certain I must have caught one there.

I'm not sure how the Cherokee ended up crashing into the house. The ground was wet, but not frozen, the house was on the left-hand side of the lane (the truck, if it were entering the lane, should have been on the right). My guess is the person was either trying to avoid a squirrel or a cat, or they were right ripped. However, it was the middle of the afternoon, so it is slightly less probable that the incident had to do with being intoxicated. What is indisputable is that they were going far too fast: the fence is destroyed and the side of the house looks pretty nasty.

Damon said to me: "Did you lift the car before you tried to loosen the bolts?" And we both laughed, because I totally did. Rookie mistake. I also didn't know that the big old hammer in the back was to knock off the wheel. I just yanked with all my might and fell back into traffic when it finally came flying off.

Damon took me and my sad tire to this place on Erin and they fixed it right up for $20.

1 comment:

Druni said...

Just last weekend i got a flat in the bitter bitter cold.
I waited 4 hours for CAA to come help and then figured i'd give it a whirl. I looked in my Mazda's owner's manual and found the secret compartment where the jack lives. It was trial and tribulation, but i got it! And afterwards. when i called CAA to cancel my rescue vehicle, the friendly dude at the other end called me a trooper and congratulated my efforts. It felt darn good to do it on my own, and now i know it's not the end of the world if it happens again.